"to maintain the editorial independence and
integrity of the New York Times and to continue
it as an independent newspaper, entirely
fearless, Page 147. 7 / ORGANIZATIONAL
INFLUENCES ON CONTENT free of ulterior
influence and unselfishly devoted to the pub

same community, a conclusion that was
supported by McCombs (1987). Utt and
Pasternack (1985) looked at ten pairs of
competing newspapers to determine whether
differences existed in the newspapers' use of
graphic devices. News-papers with similar
circulati

linkage between how reader-oriented the
newspaper is and how much money it makes.
Sensitivity to the community is a way of life
with some television stations as well. In
February 1993, two CBS-affiliated television
stations owned by the Mormon Church stop

bases in town. When the Pentagon
recommended that 31 bases be closed in March
1992, an analysis of media coverage and
interviews with journalists showed that
boosterism was also evident in the news.
"Several newspaper reporters say their stories
were give

between content and circulation would be the
same for metro dailies and suburban nondailies
in the same market. They suggest that the two
types of newspapers may serve different
functions, with metro dailies being more critical
than hometown nondailies (p

These businesses have in common a yearning
for brand names. With more channels and
movies and games and home-shopping and
sports and computer bulletin boards to choose
from, brand names like Sawyer . . . stand out.
(Auletta, 1994, p. 63) General Electric'

Carroll (1989) shows in his analysis of 57
television stations' newscasts. The larger the
market size, the more the television station
covered spontaneous news events; smallermarket stations relied more on features and
other stories that could be preplann

and journalists' choice of which source to
interview can color the stories they write.
Although interest groups make organized
efforts to influence media content (e.g.,
through press guidelines), their success in
influencing content is mixed. Interest gro

Newspapers, says that the alliance will "give us
not just the ability to put the newspaper up into
electronic form, because that's not, I don't
think, the real key to it; I think it enables us to
put a lot of information together we don't put
in the newsp

to or reduce this autonomy, and thus
susceptibility to economic pressures. Traditional
studies of newswork paint a picture of a fiercely
independent journalistic culture that keeps
news departments largely autonomous within
the larger organization. Indeed

Jones & Co., which provides full text of the Wall
Street Journal, New York Times, and Dow Jones
news services in a new package called
DowVision. The E. W. Scripps Co. has bought
Bagwell Communications/Cinetel Productions, a
large producer of cable-televis

politics. Conflicts are built into the system, both
vertically and horizontally. Reporters are
typically oriented toward their sources, with
whom they are in most frequent contact. This
brings them into frequent conflict with editors,
who are attuned more

diversity. In another study, of four Canadian
newspapers, Maxwell McCombs (1988) found
that the surviving newspaper may have actually
improved its content following the death of its
competitor. In a similar study in Cleveland,
McCombs (1987) found only ra

team concept to help make the community
more economically viable (p. 43). Connections
between reader preferences and newspaper
content are not new. In their analysis of letters
to the editor from 1948 to 1978, Pritchard and
Berkowitz (1991) found that edi

interviews, sex and crime stories. They have
evolved to meet the economic goals of the
network organization. For several reasons,
television displays the influence of economic
objectives on content most clearly. Most
broadcast organizations make all their

Ideology Raymond Williams defines ideology as
a "relatively-formal and articulated-system of
meanings, values and beliefs, of a kind a-kind
that can- be abstracted as a 'worldview'-or
'class outlook" (Williams, 1977, p. 109).
According to Samuel Becker (1

by delivering audiences to advertisers. To the
extent that they are consumed by desirable
target audiences, print and broadcast media are
attractive to advertisers. They must also provide
messages compatible with the ads. Ms.
magazine, for example, achiev

a so-called "wall-less" newspaper, where the
marketing and editorial departments are more
integrated. Newspapers such as the Sacramento
Bee have made it routine to include marketing
and promotion managers in newsroom
meetings (Kerwin, 1993). A new breed o

override forces due to job socialization and
organizational imperatives. Interestingly
enough, these are often the same people who
say that journalists' personal attitudes don't
affect content. 4. Not only tobacco advertising
seems to affect magazine cont

any formulated as necessary during a particular
mission; and media organizations in the pool
must be owned and operated by U.S.
companies. (Gersh, 1992, p. 11) THE
MARKETPLACE In the United States, the mass
media operate primarily in a commercial
market-p

technological revolution that occurred during
the 1880s and 1890s revolutionized the mass
media. Instead of being primarily local, the new
mass-produced newspapers and magazines
could cover a wider geographic area. But to
appeal to people from a wider are

PhotoStream has improved the quality of AP
photos available to newspapers. Third,
reporters use computers to access databases
and use this information to prepare better
stories. Fourth, as newspapers go to fully
computerized pagination, editors have more

such as writers, reporters, and creative staff,
gather and package the raw material. The
middle level consists of managers, editors,
producers, and others who coordinate the
process and mediate communication between
the bottom and the top of the organizat

outline, there are any number of variations in
the ways these roles can be combined and
structured with organizations. The power
associated with organization roles and the
relationships between them vary both across
and within media. Organization structur

news service for television stations. Viacom
International and AT&T are testing new
interactive services over Viacom's cable
network near San Francisco. GTE has been
testing interactive television (Main Street) with
Apollo Cablevision near Los Angeles. U.

federal government got into the computer
network business in a big way, when in 1988
then-senator Al Gore proposed a computer
network that ultimately became today's
National Information Infra-structure. Private
and public companies and universities were
a

division and the rest of the organization, and
supervising the producers, who have direct
responsibility for specific programs. Regardless
of the medium, the ultimate power lies in
ownership. In most companies, stock ownership
entitles one to vote for dir

information about the election. Numerous
studies have looked at the effects of computer
technology on newspaper content. Randall
(1979) found that newspapers that use full
electronic editing have fewer errors in spelling,
punctuation, sentence constructio